Darin Mickey, chair of the Creative Practices program, is a New York–based photographer and musician. He is the author of Death Takes a Holiday, J&L Books 2016, Stuff I Gotta Remember Not To Forget, J&L Books 2007, and co-author of Glacial Erratics, Roman Nvmerals 2024. His photographic work has appeared in numerous publications, including Aperture, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, VICE, the Washington Post Magazine, I.D., FOAM, and Doubletake among others.
He has exhibited work in both solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit, Cleveland, Rome, Copenhagen, Sydney, and Tokyo, and is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art Watson Library Collection, Museum of Modern Art Library Collection, the Museum of The City of New York, Museo d’Arte Contemporenea di Roma, and others.
Credit: Darin Mickey
ICP: What drew you to teaching at ICP—and what keeps engaged as an educator?
DM: I started teaching at ICP in October 2001, just a month after 9/11. It was a time of intense uncertainty in the city. Being surrounded by people focused on photography and image-making offered a sense of grounding then—and it still does now. There’s something very important about sharing space with students and colleagues who are all interested in understanding people, time, places, and themselves through images. That type of community has been very important to me through both good times and challenging times over the years.
As educators, we provide a certain degree of structure in the classroom combined with our individual years of personal and professional experience but, it is ultimately the student who needs to find their own voice. Originality is rarely born from rigidity. You need to give students the space to take chances, get things wrong, give feedback, make corrections, and find the ways of working that best support what they are trying to express through their work.
ICP: “Creative Practices” can mean many things. What does it represent to you today and how is that reflected in the program and the curriculum?
DM: It’s a plurality of creative processes. There’s always more than one way to create something, to see something, or to understand something. The process of exploration and experimentation—a willingness to engage with different methods, ideas, and points of view.
A large format class is not just about the camera; it also can help you understand perspective in a fundamental and tactile way. An analog color darkroom class can be extremely beneficial in learning to understand the interaction of additive and subtractive color spaces. A history class is as much a conversation with the present as it is with the past. There are many other examples. The processes inform the content and often reveal new and unexpected layers of meaning, understanding, and connection. The curriculum is designed to offer enough diversity in its offerings to support a range of interests and paths of inquiry.
"The curriculum is designed to offer enough diversity in its offerings to support a range of interests and paths of inquiry."
ICP: Taking creative risks can feel daunting. How do you help students embrace experimentation?
DM: It’s important to encourage them to try things even if they’re not sure they will work. Some of the most important discoveries come from things that don’t go as planned. Stay open and trust the process; try not to edit too much in your head before actually doing something. Do it and see what the result is rather than not doing anything and ending up with nothing.
Of course, all the instructors have years of knowledge and experience to share regarding theory, technique, and methods of approach, especially related to the physics of the medium, different processes, tools, equipment, etc. so there is always a high level of practical guidance.
ICP: Critiques are a big part of the ICP experience. How do they work within the Creative Practices Program?
DM: Critique styles vary from instructor to instructor, but it is important that the classroom is always a space for open and honest dialogue. If the instructor is the main person in the room doing all the talking, then something is not working. Given the diversity of our students in age, backgrounds, and lived experiences, everyone usually has something important to contribute. Listening is key, not only listening to others but also listening to yourself. If an openness to dialogue is established in a class, the more likely it is to be successful and beneficial for all involved.
Sara Konradi
Finding your voice is such a personal process. How do you help students get there?
DM: Everyone's work develops and grows in differing ways and at different paces. The curriculum is centered around cultivating both individual and collective creative growth and from within that is support and feedback directly from faculty—but in the end, each student needs to find their own voice and methods of working. We can’t make the work for you and it’s important that the work students make is their own and doesn’t look like “ICP work”.
There is a collective sort of "moment of breakthrough" that usually happens around two-thirds of the way through the year. The work starts to flow—they find a rhythm; they stop asking you what they should be doing, and they start showing you what they are doing.
"Some of the most important discoveries come from things that don’t go as planned. Stay open and trust the process”
ICP: What’s the one piece of advice you give students?
DM: No one can ever know everything—and that’s actually a good thing. Photography and visual communication are always evolving. The drive to keep learning can sustain a lifetime of creative work. The need to understand and figure things out can help carry you through the peaks and valleys of both the inspired moments and the inevitable creative blocks.
ICP: What types of work excites you the most?
DM: I’m often drawn to work that can show you something familiar in a completely unfamiliar way. Work that asks more questions rather than offering easy answers. I really like seeing work that forces me to re-evaluate my preconceived notions or biases of what “good work” is or should be. Work that makes me scratch my head a little and forces my brain to work a bit harder.
Sometimes a student’s work can be so good; it makes me a little jealous—in the best way. When the dialogue around the work starts to feel more peer-to-peer than student-to-teacher, that’s always nice when that happens.
ICP: This dialogue must be super charged with ideas. Do you find that these bleed into your own creative work?
DM: Absolutely! Teaching forces me to stay curious and to engage with a wide range of work, ideas, and points of view, especially those that might not be directly parallel to my own practice and experience. That is highly beneficial and definitely keeps me from getting too comfortable or complacent in my own work or thinking. Also, if I’m encouraging students to take risks, I need to remind myself to do the same. Being surrounded by people doing all kinds of different things forces me to stay open, to rethink my assumptions, and to explore new approaches myself.
Darin Mickey
ICP: Photography is always evolving. How can ICP help in shaping its future?
DM: I think the tastemakers of today and the fortune-tellers of tomorrow might be able to answer that one better than I can! The best way the institution can help shape the future of photography is by supporting the visual voices of the present.
"Photographs can be more than just pictures. They can be portals for expression, connection, dialogue, understanding, and reimagining."
ICP: What do you hope students take with them after graduation?
DM: A clearer sense of who they are—as artists, thinkers, seers, and doers. And hopefully they leave with a desire to go out and be a part of building other creative, supportive communities. Photography can be deeply personal, but it also has the power to communicate and have an impact far beyond the individual.
ICP: Finally, for someone considering applying—why ICP?
DM: If you’re curious, if you’re interested in understanding yourself and the world more deeply through photography, ICP could be a good place for you to be. Because photographs can be more than just pictures. They can be portals for expression, connection, dialogue, understanding, and reimagining.